Job and Career Insurance

You might not think of your career–or your current job–in terms of insurance, except for the insurance you hopefully have from your employer for things like medical and dental expenses. However, as I have mentioned before, life (including work) is uncertain; no one can really predict the future. The wise professional considers what he or she can and should do to prepare for unexpected changes, as well as to plan and manage change assertively when the opportunity exists to do that. What brought this to my thought today was an article on a site called Lifehacker.com, called “How To Futureproof Your Job with a Career Insurance Policy” by Alan Henry.

Career Insurance Policies

As with many things online these days, the article by Henry refers back to an earlier article on CareerSherpa by Hannah Morgan, titled “Create a Career Insurance Policy.” In the interests of simplicity, I’m not going to discuss both articles in this post, but I’ve provided links so you can check them out thoroughly yourself, if you’re interested in more details.

Among other things, Henry mentions that “whether you’ve been laid off, thinking about a new job, or you’re comfortable in the job you have, a career insurance policy can help take some of the weight from your shoulders.” Henry lists 5 actions you can take that will put you in the strongest-possible position to weather a work-related storm or just prepare to move forward more effectively.

Protect Yourself Financially with an Emergency Fund

Make Yourself More Valuable by Diversifying Your Skills and Experience

Protect Yourself Professionally by Beefing Up Your Network

Keep Your Résumé and Social Networks Updated, and Learn How to Promote Yourself

Turn Your Hobbies, Passions, or Extra Skills Into a Second Income Stream

None of the above ideas is revolutionary or earth-shaking in its novelty. The point is, if you haven’t thought seriously about them in the past, it would be a good idea to start doing that.

Essential Foundation for Job and Career Insurance Policies

Whether you’re thinking short-term (how can I keep the job I have now?) or long-term (how can I progress to the next level in my career over the coming year or two?), your evaluation and planning need to take into account what the situation is now. What’s good about it and bad about it from your perspective, the viewpoint of your family, and so on? What do you want to preserve and what do you need to change? What’s realistic as part of your career insurance planning, what’s a stretch but do-able, and what’s totally “pie in the sky”? I can use my own situation as a quick example.

I’m a professional resume writer and career/job search coach. I’ve been providing these services for about 20 years and thoroughly enjoy my work. I don’t want or need to change that. However, realistically, I can’t expect to keep doing that until I’m 90! I should have a good plan based on two conditions: (1) what will I do if for some reason it becomes impossible for me to continue in my present career path? (2) what resources–financial and otherwise–do I need to have in place for a worst-case scenario? I might prefer not to think about these subjects, but pulling something over my head so I don’t have to look at them will not make my situation any stronger! In fact, it could make matters much worse if a change were to be forced on me.

Treat job and career insurance policies as at least a necessary evil, like having car and home insurance that you hope you’ll never need. View them as peace-of-mind plans. They’re worth the effort it takes to create and maintain them.

4 Comments on “Job and Career Insurance”

Georgia,
Our lives have become so busy and we often get bogged down in the day-to-day crises so we forget to make time to plan for the long term.

Thomas L. Friedman recently wrote a post about what it will take for individuals to compete in the workplace today. In short, Friedman says that we all need to take more individual initiative which he says means more P.Q (passion quotient) and C.Q. (curiosity quotient).

I hope we all start thinking differently about what a career means and how we each can have greater control over how we make a living!

Hannah, your comment and the view expressed by Mr. Friedman that you referenced are so true! I think we’re too often operating in “overwhelm” mode these days and not expressing the energy and enthusiasm we need in order to make ourselves valuable to the people (or companies) we want to be associated with. Fortunately, there are supportive resources if we know where to look and then make the effort to follow through. CareerSherpa strikes me as one of those resources.

I visited your blog and read the referenced “weird insurance” post–some interesting possibilities I’d never thought of. Of course, my original post used insurance solely as a metaphor (i.e., protection for our job or career, not actual insurance that someone could buy), but it’s true that we use insurance in a diverse number of ways throughout the world today.